The interior design firms that I often work with go through the effort of matching this wall surface treatment, with that floor surface treatment, to that fabric, etc… but TEO JASMIN has made the effort to create their own surface treatment by usiing imagery USUALLY suited for wall murals as the surfaces of not simply wall art, but fabrics and furniture.

I do believe that their use of digital printing makes the objects that are found in a room, whether it be a chair, a pillow, or a throw, as something to be stared at.

Can’t you see having your next party and having your throw pillows be the topic of discussion? Ha!

A spectacular “cosmic eye” has been photographed in space by a telescope in Chile, showing a distant nebula in which sunlike stars are burning themselves out.

The image of the Helix nebula, which lies 700 light years away in the constellation Aquarius, was captured with the Wide Field Imager instrument at the La Silla Observatory high above the Atacama Desert.

Already amazing in color and already resembling the human eye, when duplicated, it has an incredible resemblance to the human face.

This very high resolution image would be excellent for police stations, or anywhere else where big brother may be watching. Then again, maybe it’s better for a church. This image can be produced at up to 10′ high, by up to 40′ in width.

• What if you have to provide a mural that runs around all four sides of a room, and has to match up perfectly from starting edge to final edge?
• What if you have to provide 4 sides of an interior wall and have the beginning and end of the mural match up?

This isn’t your momma’s dainty flower design that you can hack together in the corner above the door.  You have to be dead on to please the customer.

What do you do?

Measure, Measure, Measure

This type of project cannot be done with drawings, it has to be performed with real live measurements of the final wall finish.

For each of the four (or more) walls

• Measure the breadth on the top
• Measure the breadth on the bottom

All of these measurements should be accurate to the quarter inch or better.

Do the Math

OK, here is the hard part.  You have to come up with the exact right width of a mural that takes into account variations in the plumb of the wall, and variations in height and width for each wall.

This sounds like it will be hard, but there is a simple fact that makes it not so bad- you are building a mural that starts and stops at the same point- so there IS a correct answer.

1. Add up the breadth on the top of each wall
2. Add up the breadth on the bottom of each wall
3. Determine which is larger- this is your overall mural width.

With an over all width, you figure your height based on your measurements, and you have your mural size.  IS this a perfect solution?  Unfortunately it is only as perfect as the plumb of the wall- and your print will be off by the plumb difference- that’s just a fact.  We’re doing the best we can here.

Special Bleed

Although it’s a good guess, When wrapping a room, The bleed on your starting edge is not exactly the image from the END of your image, and vice versa.  If the print does not match up perfectly, you will have a portion of the image that is duplicated.

Instead, determine a blurry, smeared, or ‘blank’ portion of the image that has a 1/4″ repeat, or constant image.  THIS should be the bleed.  Although the intention is to cut off ALL of this bleed, matching starting edge and final edge should be easy if they are the exact same pattern.

These are the techniques that we here at Lateral Art offer to our customers in producing accurate, right on graphics that no end customer would complain about.

How does this happen? – Wallcoverings are fabric backed, but can still stretch under normal conditions (a very small amount).  When heated, as when under an ink jet printer, and pulled taught between rollers, some stretching occurs.  This minimal amount is usually only 0.25% or less.   When cooled, the wallcovering material is usually not pulled taught (as on the take-off of the ink jet printer) and returns to its actual size. –This means that the printed design is now 0.25% smaller than it was intended to be.

0.25% shrinkage, big deal, right?  I’ve had customers deal with high height projects (40′ heights in a casino) that had shrinkage of nearly 1.5″.  This is a BIG deal for if you are matching other architectural components.

Solution-Determine the amount of shrinkage and adjust

• Do a test run by simply printing a design of hack marks on the outer edge of a print – something that can be printed over for a different run
• Record the total printed distance
• Measure and record the actual distance of the hash marks
• Determine the difference and stretch your design by the difference, and reprint.

Solution- Maintain product tension during cooling

The problem with shrinkage is the fact that the material is allowed to shrink.  Don’t allow the material to shrink by maintaining the same material tension during the cooling process.  This will in affect allow the material to cool off in its extended state. – This one will be some trial and error.

During the nineteenth century, panoramas and related forms of visual illusionism–dioramas, moving panoramas, peep-shows–became an early form of mass entertainment in European and American cities.

Cross section of Robert Barker’s Panorama, Leicester Square, London, 1789

The panoramic view itself was far from new. Panoramas are at least as old as the Bayeux Tapestry, and artists had been painting bird’s-eye views of cities long before the invention of manned flight made them a reality. What was new was the idea of putting the painting into a circular room and attempting to deceive the eye into believing that it was looking not at a painting, but reality itself. The history of panoramas is closely interwoven with that of photography throughout the nineteenth century, each playing an important part in the other’s development.

Poppy Field Mural

The above image is part of the December 2008 LateralArt collection.

The image is targeted for 19′ tall x 14′ wide.  As always, LateralArt is happy to custom design to your dimensions and specific design needs.  The image here has been cloned to produce a much wider width to coincide with our LateralArt theme of ‘wide walls’.

Contact Us or Read about how we can help you apply this image to your project.

They’ve used digitally printed murals of unique furniture, but have not been scared to cut them to pieces, and overlay them onto moveable doors.

Obviously these are tailored for those with small living spaces, but the concept in relation to division and revelation of new layers is exciting.

At Lateral Art, we’ve had the opportunity to work with custom cutting houses that cut Aluminum Letters, Sintra, and of course digitally printed items out for us.

What about two layers of murals, one cut to pieces with an intricate pattern, revealing the other behind, but 6 to 12 inches away. As the visitor walks from one viewpoint to the next, the back/revealed image keeps changing. Kind of like a massive lenticular.

We’re up to that challenge, we only need that target wall. Do you have a good application?

One thing to note – the decorator for this project was thinking ahead in his or her combination of the mural with the well matched chosen lighting.  It’s not a trivial task to line up mural positions with other wall objects.  One has to pay particular attention to HOW the installer deals with the bleed of the mural.

If 6″ of bleed was provided here in the install, but the installer just lined the left hand edge of the mural with the left hand edge of the bleed, the entire mural could be off by 6″ away from any electrical junction boxes.  A critical error.  It’s very important to clarify to an installer HOW to deal with provided bleed, and HOW to deal with other objects.

Kuler is an online respository of color themes that are sorted and voted on – a little Web 2.0 community for color enthusiasts. We’ve utilizied this tool when creating new murals, and are happy to use it again based on client request.

This tool is excellent for pulling up new ideas for mural use, as well as other A&D and printing projects, however one has to be cautioned that the colors here are not necessarily printable. Some colors are outside of the printing capability of many wide format printers. Color problems often occur with very light colors, very dark colors, greens, oranges, and flourescents/neons.

Jelly Dance One Mural

The above image is part of the December 2008 LateralArt collection.  All elements are individually created for easy replacement by the end designer.  All components are separate layers.  Color Adjust, and texture layers are separate for easy customization to end user needs.

The image is 20,000 pixels wide by 7,200 pixels tall.  The surrealistic color choices of the jellyfish are offset by the fact that they are actual Jelly Photographs.

As always, LateralArt is happy to custom design to your dimensions and specific design needs.